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Vines book dissects auto company PR crises for rambunctious ride [Detroit Free Press]
[October 31, 2014]

Vines book dissects auto company PR crises for rambunctious ride [Detroit Free Press]


(Detroit Free Press (MI) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 31--"What Did Jesus Drive? Crisis PR in Cars, Computers and Christianity" is a pretty provocative title for the new business book now available for purchase online and in bookstores Nov. 15.



But it hardly begins to convey the rambunctious, profane, politically incorrect ride that author Jason Vines, a past public relations chief of several auto companies and Compuware, takes readers through in 400 pages of stranger-than-fiction tales from inside some of the messiest corporate upheavals of the past three decades.

An alternative title might well have been "A Cage Fighter's Guide to PR Combat." Where to start? How about October 2000, at the height of the Ford-Firestone crisis over tire tread separation and rollovers of Ford Explorer SUVs? Vines, then Ford's PR vice president, had taken a big gamble and agreed to a request from Don Hewitt of "60 Minutes" for on-camera interviews of the automaker's CEO Jacques Nasser and chairman Bill Ford.


"Hewitt," he writes, "was the creator of the kick-your-ass television news magazine. All PR people knew you didn't want to be the subject of '60 Minutes,' especially when people had died in your product." Lesley Stahl would conduct the interviews. Vines writes that "Lesley had a reputation as a sweetheart off-camera and a pit bull once the klieg lights were on," but he doesn't leave it there.

"Without the favorable camera tricks," he adds, "Stahl looked much older in person, but she was still a babe." Groan.

Vines and his bosses wound up pleased with the "60 Minutes" piece, but other high-profile people get skewered in the book.

Robert Nardelli, installed as Chrysler CEO by Cerberus Capital Management in 2007 after DaimlerChrysler's unraveling, is ridiculed by Vines as "Shallow Bob." Vines portrays Nardelli as a self-absorbed fellow, jealous of the media praise that his underling, former Toyota executive Jim Press, received upon joining Chrysler.

Vines' harshest barbs are directed at high-profile public safety advocates such as Joan Claybrook, former administrator of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) and longtime head of Public Citizen; and Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. Vines blames them and their allies for hyping unsubstantiated claims of unintended acceleration in vehicles and exaggerating the evils of SUVs.

Claybrook he calls "a blowhard who played fast and loose with the facts to support her lawyer buddies." And he charges that Claybrook, Ditlow and Ralph Nader "helped create a public panic among Explorer owners that made the situation worse and potentially more deadly. ... It was shameful, but that is what these folks do for a living in order to create a toxic atmosphere for their trial attorney buddies." Over the top? Perhaps, and some would no doubt argue that a more dispassionate, less in-your-face approach might serve clients and employers better in some cases. But that wouldn't be Jason Vines.

On the positive side, he gives high marks to Nasser for honesty; to former Chrysler and current Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche for smarts; and to former Compuware CEO Peter Karmanos for having a big charitable heart and good intentions, despite Karmanos' stubborn defense of Kwame Kilpatrick, the disgraced former mayor of Detroit.

And for humor, it's hard to beat Vines' recollections of the exchanges between Chrysler pitchman Snoop Dog and the Germanic CEO Zetsche -- who called the rapper "Snoopy Doggy Dog" in a Chicago speech -- and Lee Iacocca, who appeared as Snoop's golf partner in a surreal TV spot for Chrysler.

Maybe, as I suggested to Vines at a recent taping of the "Autoline" Detroit TV show airing this coming weekend, he will have trouble finding work in this town again after this book. (The show airs at 10:30 a.m. Sunday on WTVS in Detroit, and on PBS stations elsewhere on different days and times.) On the other hand, after being bombarded for weeks with no-holds-barred political attack ads during the run-up to next Tuesday's elections, I'm thinking that maybe there's more demand than ever for a cage-fighting PR practitioner.

Contact Tom Walsh: 313-223-4430 or [email protected], also follow him on Twitter @TomWalsh_freep.

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